More Harryhausen AR tomfoolery: 20 Million Miles to Earth (1 Viewer)

[oscar_merkx]

Thanks for the info yet I had no idea there was so much wrong with the review.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I wrote to the editor at DVDFile about the obvious errors in the 20,000,000 MILES review; I see they haven't fixed it yet. The same reviewer also misspelled Charlton Heston's name as "Charleton" throughout his KHARTOUM review - that error also remains.

 

[Damin J Toell]

I've never found DVDFile to be responsive to e-mails concerning blatantly incorrect reviews. For example, I e-mailed them when the Keeping The Faith review was posted in Oct. 2000 and said this about the commentary track:

In addition to the deleted scenes and bloopers, producer and screenwriter Stuart Blumberg provides a screen-specific audio commentary, not only for the film, but the deleted scenes as well. This is a good commentary, but strangely, Norton is nowhere to be found, which is odd considering he is director after all.

It's clear that this guy went nowhere near the commentary track, as it features both Norton and Blumberg, and Norton is far from quiet. No correction was ever made.
DJ

 

[Jim_K]

This is one of the worst, most uninformed reviews I've ever read. It is chock-full of misinformation and shows a lack of knowledge of the material.

I know DVDfile is a friend of this forum but I totally agree with this statement. Horrible review.
Are DVD reviewers that hard to come by that they have to settle for this misinformed s**t?
Anyone that wants an informed/respectful reviewer of cult/genre films should check out DVDsavants reviews.
And also Derek's reviews TheCinemalaser.

 

[Jean-Michel]

Wells wrote an update:

Home Theatre Forum correspondent Peter Apruzzese has written he once interviewed [the film's stop-motion animator] Ray Harryhausen about this aspect-ratio issue. One of his questions was, "Except for First Men in the Moon (1964), which was in Panavision, what is the preferred or intended aspect ratio of the rest of your post-1954 films, both the black-and-white and color ones?" Harryhausen's reply was that all his other movies "were filmed full-aperture" but "designed for theatrical projection at up to 1.85." He also related the story about how Columbia actually made some SuperScope (approx. 2.0:1) prints of 20 Million Miles to Earth, which did not make the film look good at all.

By Harryhausen's own determinations, therefore, a 2:1 aspect ratio was pretty much unacceptable. 1.85:1 is a little bit higher and deeper, but is not terribly different from 2:1, meaning that by Harryhausen's standard 1.85:1 wouldn't look quite as poor but would be in the same aesthetically undesirable realm. I've seen how this film looks in a full-frame, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and it's beautiful. To preserve at least some of the handsomeness of the visuals it should have been mastered at 1.66:1, which would have resulted in only modest top-and-bottom cropping.

This is a bit more reasonable response, but I take issue with the claim that 1.85:1 and 2:1 are basically interchangable (presumably Wells would have no problem with cropping a 1.85:1 film to 16:9 for DVD). And again, no mention is made of the 1.33:1 version on the same disc. At the very least I would like to know if it's open matte or pan and scan, but Wells doesn't even know it's there. He should team up with that reviewer from DVDFile, they'd be a great pair.

(Although, in semi-defense of the DVDFile review, I, too, think 20 Million Miles to Earth is an incredibly silly film. The effects are great, though.)

 

[Jean-Michel]

Something else I just noticed......

I checked out the DVD Savant's review of the disc and he claims that the widescreen version is actually 1.78:1, not 1.85:1. If true, then Wells really has no reason to complain, since there's even less difference between 1.78:1 and 1.66:1 (his personal preference for the film) than between 1.85:1 and 2:1. That is, IF it's true -- every other review says it's 1.85:1.

 

[Derek M Germano]

Usually a movie with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio will show no black bars on a screen capture, those at 1.85:1 will show mild black bars, as with this screen capture from 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH:

However, because the image is slightly windowboxed, the actual aspect ratio may fall somewhere between the two.

 

[GerardoHP]

Thank you, Peter, I figured it couldn't be any other way.